Editorial: A diet for school junk food

Published 9:26 pm, Tuesday, February 5, 2013

THE ISSUE:

New rules bar unhealthy food in school vending machines.

THE STAKES:

It's about time. But the diet isn't complete without palatable alternatives.

Let's face it: Getting kids to eat a decent school lunch has been a challenge ever since there were kids and schools. No doubt a young Plato traded his stuffed grape leaves for a square of honey-drenched baklava.

Such occasional swaps were perhaps once no big deal, but we've come a long way in just a few decades. Today, childhood obesity is a serious, widespread problem that has implications for society, from the rising cost of health care to national security. Once they reach the age to be eligible for military service, one in four young people today are too overweight to enlist.

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So it's welcome news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is issuing new rules to get junk food out of public schools. That's a start.

A kid's world today is saturated with tempting, mass-produced treats, and many schools have been sending mixed messages at best. Teachers lecture students about the importance of a proper diet in health class, and then send them out into the hallway where, for the sheer profit of it, schools place vending machines full of fat-laden, sugary junk. Talk about a fruitless pursuit.

The Centers for Disease Control calls such temptations "competitive foods" — foods that lure students, their appetites, and quite often their loose change away from healthy school lunches.

The numbers and anecdotal evidence suggest that junk food has been winning this competition, not just in school, but everywhere.

According to the CDC, the percentages of overweight and obese children have skyrocketed in recent decades. Just 7 percent of children aged 6 to 11 and adolescents aged 12 to 19 were obese in 1980; in 2010, obesity in both groups reached 18 percent. More than one-third of children today qualify as overweight.

The reason for the increase isn't hard to figure out — more empty calories and not enough physical activity to burn them off.

Until now, the only significant federal restriction on school vending machines was that they not be available to students during meal times. Now, however, the USDA is barring the sale of junk food in schools all day under the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Schools Act, which was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The change of policy was decades overdue. This isn't about mere physical aesthetics — although obesity is linked to social and self-esteem problems — but about health. Being overweight sets a person up for physical ailments, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, muscular and skeletal problems. We all pay for it in the higher cost of health care.

Healthier food in vending machines is part of what needs to be a more consistent message about health and nutrition in schools, where children spend one-fourth to one-third of their day and consume as much as half their calories. But just limiting a captive audience's choices isn't enough.

As we've seen in recent weeks, school districts like Niskayuna and Voorheesville have been dropping their participation in federal lunch subsidy programs because students are throwing out the vegetables and fruits schools must serve in order to qualify for the funds. They'll do that whether they have access to junk food or not.

The answer isn't to give up. To truly reinforce the message, schools and entities like the USDA need turn their attention to not just the nutritional content of school lunches, but also their palatability. That's not meant as a cheap shot at school cafeterias. It's just this: If governments and schools want young people to eat good school food, the school food has to be what young people consider good. With some work, there is no reason school menus can't meet both those demands.